Apple reportedly building out Boston Siri team, suggests rapid build-out of proprietary tech
A report on Monday claims Apple is bolstering its Siri research team in Cambridge, Mass., bringing in new blood and expanding into a larger office as the company weens off Nuance-based technology.
Local publication BetaBoston spoke with commercial retailers familiar with Apple's expansion, who said the company is looking to move the Siri team into a 13,000-square-foot space in the Kendall Square building's upper floors. The group currently works out of an office on the fifth floor, seen above.
According to sources, the larger space could afford Apple room enough to hire some 65 people, which would be a major upgrade from current staff numbers. The upgraded office space is Apple's third lease in the building.
It has been speculated that the core of Apple's Boston group is comprised of employees who previously worked at VoiceSignal Technologies, a firm purchased by Nuance in 2007. As Apple's Siri currently relies on licensed Nuance speech recognition technology, which is also used by other OEMs like Samsung, the Cupertino company is rumored to be in the midst of developing its own in-house solution.
In June, Apple was rumored to have created a special Siri development team, which includes former Nuance vice president of research Larry Gillick and speech project manager Gunnar Evermann. Also hired on to the small division was Alex Acero, who was reportedly poached from Microsoft in 2013.
Apple's next-generation Siri virtual assistant will debut with iOS 8 on Tuesday, supporting hooks into the HomeKit framework for voice control of smart home hardware like lights, appliances and more.
Local publication BetaBoston spoke with commercial retailers familiar with Apple's expansion, who said the company is looking to move the Siri team into a 13,000-square-foot space in the Kendall Square building's upper floors. The group currently works out of an office on the fifth floor, seen above.
According to sources, the larger space could afford Apple room enough to hire some 65 people, which would be a major upgrade from current staff numbers. The upgraded office space is Apple's third lease in the building.
It has been speculated that the core of Apple's Boston group is comprised of employees who previously worked at VoiceSignal Technologies, a firm purchased by Nuance in 2007. As Apple's Siri currently relies on licensed Nuance speech recognition technology, which is also used by other OEMs like Samsung, the Cupertino company is rumored to be in the midst of developing its own in-house solution.
In June, Apple was rumored to have created a special Siri development team, which includes former Nuance vice president of research Larry Gillick and speech project manager Gunnar Evermann. Also hired on to the small division was Alex Acero, who was reportedly poached from Microsoft in 2013.
Apple's next-generation Siri virtual assistant will debut with iOS 8 on Tuesday, supporting hooks into the HomeKit framework for voice control of smart home hardware like lights, appliances and more.
Comments
There are definitely area that need a lot of improvement — but all voice recognition/dictation does. I use Siri every day. In fact I just used it a few minutes ago after I put money in a parking meter: "Set timer for 45 minutes." Boom! I never want to be without that time saver.
I find it handy for timers and alarms, to.
THIS. PLEASE.
Siri needs an overhaul.
It'll never get me to use a Windows phone but Cortana really has very nice voice quality.
Robert
iphone 5s, ipad, ipad, ipad, Apple TV, imac, macbook pro
There are definitely area that need a lot of improvement — but all voice recognition/dictation does. I use Siri every day. In fact I just used it a few minutes ago after I put money in a parking meter: "Set timer for 45 minutes." Boom! I never want to be without that time saver.
I tell Siri call Pizza 2 Go and its responds "Calling Peter Siago - Work"
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So Siri is discouraging your gluttony; good for him.
I thought that if you hadn't made Pizza 2 Go a contact in your address book the "call" command wouldn't work, but I just tested it and it works for me in the US. It does interpreted "2" as "To" but that's understandable.
There are definitely area that need a lot of improvement — but all voice recognition/dictation does. I use Siri every day. In fact I just used it a few minutes ago after I put money in a parking meter: "Set timer for 45 minutes." Boom! I never want to be without that time saver.
"Time saver"? To me, that feels like you spent extra time doing something you didn't need to do at all.
My method? I simply note what time it is, as or before I get out of the car. Zero seconds taken, and the added benefit of engaging my brain!
Are we really to the point in human evolution where we need to rely on phones and centralized services to remember when our parking expires? Seriously, this is much bigger than parking meters, it feels like just one of many examples I read about of people looking for ways to justify using their personal tech, putting in even more effort to make things "convenient". Heck, for the timer to be useful, you had to do some math as well (to make sure the timer goes off with enough time to allow you to get back to the car, right?). At that point you need to remember how much time you allowed for. Either that, or you're setting it for the exact expiration time and you need to keep pulling the damn phone out of your pocket all the time and switch to the timer app to check on time. Be honest, no matter what methods you come up with, it seems like it's just a cute trick, not really saving you time, is it?
At least not until this stuff is directly wired into our brain. At that point I might concede a time savings, although it's a world I'm glad I won't live in.
There's a whole other side of it related to keeping brains active as much as possible. The notion that people are clearing out space for more important things is generally hogwash. It's like physical exercise. When we have robots that can grab a beverage from the fridge and bring it to us without having to get our sorry asses off the couch, millions of people will rejoice (seriously!). But it'll be just one more step in the evolution of muscular degeneration and heart disease for most people.
And here I bet you thought your comment would be uncontroversial.
What if it’s broken. What then.
When we have robots that can grab a beverage from the fridge and bring it to us without having to get our sorry asses off the couch, millions of people will rejoice (seriously!). But it'll be just one more step in the evolution of muscular degeneration and heart disease for most people.
I will be in the first test group for vat-grown stem cell neurons to be injected into my head. I don’t care what being a test subject implies for what’s left of me afterward; I can’t live like this much longer. Just have to hold out until they figure out how to turn stem cells into neurons. And none of this donor crap. MY stem cells. I’m not taking immunosuppressants.
You’re dead right that Wall-E’s future is a real concern for idiots and civilization as a whole, but the technological renaissance that will come from the birth of GPHR should in no way be fought against.
*General Purpose Humanoid Robotics: the holy grail of that field for the last 50 or so years. It will represent the convergence of high density battery tech (the earliest of which we will be seeing at the end of this decade in consumer electronics), artificial spatial awareness (they’ll probably run off of Google’s self-driving car tech at first), and intelligent assistant software (Siri’s granddaughter will be what the first GPHRs run).
*General Purpose Humanoid Robotics: the holy grail of that field for the last 50 or so years. It will represent the convergence of high density battery tech (the earliest of which we will be seeing at the end of this decade in consumer electronics), artificial spatial awareness (they’ll probably run off of Google’s self-driving car tech at first), and intelligent assistant software (Siri’s granddaughter will be what the first GPHRs run).
Andrew from Bicentennial Man?
I certainly engage my brain by trying not to follow a mental time schedule in my head so I won't get a parking ticket as this is something I don't consider a worthwhile task for my grey matter.
I'd rather allow myself to be fully engaged with a more suitable task at hand so I don't wait time looking at the clock to remember the time, adding some time variable to it and then remember to glance back at the clock every now and then to maximize my time without going over the allotted window.
Sounds as though you need an iWatch! Hold your horses.
I don't know why there's so much hate for Siri. i find it to be a useful tool, but I'll also concede that it's time to make Siri a more robust AI. I think help from IBM is just what Apple needs.
Exactly, and the NSRs from I, Robot, and any of the other myriad robots we see in fiction. None, of course, with anything even remotely resembling true AI (like in fiction), but simply machines–slaves to humanity’s will–with the ability to understand us individually on a high-level basis.